


Of Shopping Malls and Summer Storms

by sungold_summer



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Mabel is a ray of sunshine, Teenage Dipper Pines and Mabel Pines, both twins are lowkey gay but it's mostly in the background, they're both in high school, wholesome twin banter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:54:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22856569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sungold_summer/pseuds/sungold_summer
Summary: After a long day of mall shenanigans, the twins have time to kill while they wait for their ride home. Dipper tries to discuss his plans for the future. Mabel isn’t so excited.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Of Shopping Malls and Summer Storms

On a beautiful summer afternoon just before the start of senior year, Dipper and Mabel exited the Piedmont Mall with classic mystery twin panache: namely, Dipper spotting his sister while her footwear actively maimed her. He guided Mabel to a nearby bench just outside the door.

“I told you the heels were a bad idea.”

“Bro-bro, sometimes you have to suffer for fashion.” Mabel dropped her armload of shopping bags on the ground. She sat down in a flurry of swishy skirts and glitter. Dipper took a seat next to her in his boring— but sensible— sneakers. He knew from experience that six-hour school shopping trips required endurance gear. Mabel, being a force of nature, could not be dissuaded from going dressed to kill. And by ‘kill,’ Dipper meant ‘decked out like a living vaporwave post doused in glitter.’

Mabel peeled off her strappy four-inch heels. Her nose wrinkled at the angry red sores they left behind. “ _Yikes-a-roni, broni!_ You have any band-aids in your prepper bag?”

“I’m not a prepper!” Dipper refuted. “I just like being prepared for any and all disasters. ...And yeah, I do. Gimme a sec.” He fished around in his backpack for the metal tin full of medical supplies. He handed two bandaids to Mabel. She gasped with delight at the color.

“Aw, bro, you got pink ones!”

Dipper elbowed his sister. “Yeah, dude, it’s ‘cause I knew your dumb butt would need them.”

“ _You’re_ a dumb butt!” Mabel retorted. “And a sweet butt. Thanks, Dip-dop.”

While Mabel tended to her fashion-related injuries, Dipper checked his phone. The mall closed in a half hour and he still hadn’t heard from their dad. Not that he really wanted to get back home, but he could see a late summer thunderstorm clouding the horizon, and he had no intention of weathering it under the meager awning that covered the walkway.

Dipper sent a quick text: _ready 4 pickup, where r u?_

“Any word from Dad?” Mabel asked.

“Nah. I think we’re going to be here a minute.”

Mabel saw this as an opportunity to rifle through her purchases of the day. She dug into a Hot Topic bag at her side. “I think the goth cashier was into you, bro,” she teased.

Dipper felt his face grow hot. “N-no he wasn’t!” He shoved his twin. “He was just being nice! If anything, that punk chick was into _you!_ ” 

Mabel stuck her tongue out. “Yeah she was, ‘cause I’m _cute_!” She lifted one hand from her shopping bags to rub at the inside corner of her eye. Her fingers came away with a smear of eyeshadow and glitter. “Aw, beans!” Mabel shouted. “I’m wearing makeup!” She smudged the mess on her skirt, then checked her reflection in the dark glass of her phone. “How’s it look, bro? Did I mess it up?”

“Your eyeliner could still kill a man,” Dipper replied. Mabel’s eyes sparkled.

“ _Great_.”

A sudden text alert rumbled Dipper’s phone. 

_Stuck in traffic. Running late. -Dad_

“He has got to stop signing his texts,” Dipper groaned.

“Pfft, you mean Dad?” Mabel laughed. “One time he texted me a whole keyboard-drawing of a cat.”

“Excuse you, it’s called _ASCII,_ and it’s an art form,” Dipper said. “Anyway, there’s some kind of traffic jam. We’ll have to wait.”

Mabel shrugged with a little “Womp-womp!” She went back to sorting through accessories from Claire’s.

Dipper sagged on the bench. He watched the dark clouds grow ever closer. The first cold breeze of stormfront whipped across the mostly-empty parking lot. “I wish we had gone back to Gravity Falls for the summer,” he said.

Mabel held a pair of rhinestone sunglasses up to her face and squinted through them. “Well, yeah, but don’t you have that film-camp-thing?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Dipper sighed. “Y’know, it’s fun and all, I’ve made a bunch of friends, I’m really learning a lot, and…I might try for the local film festival? Maybe? But—” The breeze stirred across his face. “I dunno, man. I miss it there.”

Mabel folded her arms across the back of the bench and rested her head on them. “I know, bro. I miss it too,” she admitted quietly.

“Remember when Waddles got super smart and sounded like that astrophysicist for a day?”

“Pfft, remember when you had a huge giant crush on Wendy?”

Dipper’s face grew hot. “Yeah— well— you dated five gnomes in a trench coat!”

“You kissed a merman!”

“It was _mouth-to-mouth resuscitation_ and you kissed him first!”

Mabel grinned smugly. “I can’t believe we kissed the same person.”

Dipper pointedly remained silent. Now was not the time to bring up Danny Weismann in tenth grade.

The first fat drops of rain splashed down on the parking lot. Dipper watched, half intrigued and half distracted, as the pale expanse of dry pavement shrunk under the force of a steadily-increasing downpour. 

A little family dashed out of the mall, shooed by a security guard about to lock the doors. Both twins realized they were now trapped out in the storm. They shared a look.

“I hope there isn’t any lightning,” Dipper muttered.

“Do you need an umbrella?” Mabel shouted at the family. She threw a pastel pink-and-yellow compact umbrella at the father when he nodded. He eyed the star charms on the handle with a mix of confusion and charmed surprise. “Open it up!” Mabel called. “It’s got stars on the inside, too!”

The father of the little family deployed Mabel’s bright gift and sprinted through the torrents to his car. The mother waited just inside the awning’s zone of questionable dryness with a stroller in one hand and a toddler in the other. “Thank you,” she said, glad but obviously weary. 

Mabel flashed her a dazzling smile and two thumbs up.

The family bundled into their car with a remarkable to-do of shepherding children and folding strollers and slamming the trunk so it shut all the way. Mabel took back her umbrella. She shook the raindrops off into a slowly-creeping puddle at their feet. Dipper drew his legs up. He waited until the little family was out of sight, until they were alone in the storm.

“…Mabel, can I tell you something?”

Mabel gave him a little worried smile. “You can always tell me anything, bro-bro.”

A cold gust of mist washed over Dipper. Far away, a cell tower took the brunt of a lighting strike. He tried not to shudder at the resounding clap of thunder. “...I want to move back to Gravity Falls after we graduate. I want to live there. Permanently.”

And there was the fear he knew would rise in his sister’s eyes, there was the expression of pain— 

“But— but— what about college?” Mabel protested. “What about us?” 

“I don’t know!” Dipper said, the words cascading out of his mouth. “I don’t know! I haven’t even— Mom and Dad don’t know, nothing’s— I haven’t talked to anyone about it yet, it’s just an idea, I just—ugh! It’s stupid. It’s stupid! Forget about it.” He folded his arms across his chest and hunched into the gesture.

On the other side of the bench, Mabel mirrored him sulkily.

“Figures,” she grumbled. “You go and leave me behind the first chance you get.”

“This isn’t about _you_! I’ll be 18, I’ll be an adult, I can do whatever I want!” Dipper gestured into the downpour. “Hell, you can do whatever you want, too! Go...start a fashion company or an Etsy store or...or, get Instagram famous! I don’t care! We don’t have to be identical forever, Mabel!”

Another lighting strike drilled the ground. Dipper huddled away from a curtain of rain that gusted under the awning.

“Is it because of Grunkle Ford?” Mabel accused, not facing her brother. “Is that why you want to leave?”

Dipper’s mouth wormed in and out of sadness. His defensive anger faded. “No, no, it’s not him, it’s… Do you remember last summer?” he said. “When we spent the week looking after the Mystery Shack for Soos?”

Mabel shrugged.

“That was the happiest I’ve ever been, Mabel. It felt so… _incredible_ to live there, just the two of us. I felt _free_ , I felt like I _belonged_ …It felt like home.” He worried his lip. “I’d give anything to go back and do it again.”

“Careful what you wish for, bro-bro,” Mabel grated. Dipper laughed, partially out of nerves. He knew she wasn’t joking. He rubbed the back of his head.

“You could always come with me, you know.”

Mabel lifted her head. They both quietly pretended to blame the rain for her ruined eyeliner. Dipper gave her a hesitant smile.

“I want to go because Gravity Falls is where I belong. But that doesn’t mean I have to leave you behind.” He held a hand out towards his twin. “That little town is big enough for the both of us, don’t you think?”

Mabel laughed back a sob. She smeared the rest of her makeup with the heel of one palm. Without warning, she caught Dipper up in a crushing bear hug.

“Awkward sibling hug?” Dipper joked, air wheezing from his lungs.

“Sincere sibling hug,” Mabel said.

They patted each other’s backs in perfect unison.

* * *

The last of the storm’s rain dripped off the mall awning. The sun shone bright over its perch above the horizon, granting everything a pale glittering glow. Clouds of steam rose in long curls from the empty parking lot. Mabel carefully removed the remains of her makeup with a wipe from her purse and a mirror from Dipper’s not-a-prepper bag.

Dipper’s phone buzzed. He checked the text:

_I’m here. By Macy’s. -Dad_

“Dad’s here,” Dipper announced, standing from the bench. “We’ll have to go meet him on the other side.” He glanced at the locked mall doors. Dipper could already feel the rainwater soaking into his sneakers from the long walk around. “...We should get going.”

Mabel stashed all of her things back in their bags, then jumped up, shopping in one hand, shoes in the other. She stepped barefoot into the nearest puddle. Her painted nails sparkled in the muddy water.

“Are you sure you should do that?” Dipper asked. Mabel shrugged off his worry.

“Nope!” She swung her bags out before her. “Come on, bro-bro, let’s go!”

Dipper snorted. He stashed his phone back in his pocket and followed his sister out into the bright and storm-tossed future.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact! This little fic is based off of a personal experience, ie, waiting out a thunderstorm under a mall awning with my sister. Dipper and Mabel had it easy. Not counting the tough discussion, of course.  
> (Fun fact 2: that was only the second-worst place I've spent a thunderstorm!)


End file.
